DOCSLIB.ORG

The Auditory Perception of North American English Diphthongs in Vocabulary Items by English Teachers in Turkey

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Auditory Perception of North American English Diphthongs in Vocabulary Items by English Teachers in Turkey Çorakçı, N. & Demirezen, M. (2020) The auditory perception of North American English diphthongs in vocabulary items by English teachers in Turkey. International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET),7(2),451-466. http://iojet.org/index.php/IOJET/article/view/709 Received: 09.08.2019 Received in revised form: 18.03.2020 Accepted: 28.03.2020 THE AUDITORY PERCEPTION OF NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH DIPHTHONGS IN VOCABULARY ITEMS BY ENGLISH TEACHERS IN TURKEY Research Article Neslihan Çorakçı [email protected] Ministry of National Education, Turkey Mehmet Demirezen [email protected] Ufuk University Neslihan Çorakçı is an English teacher at a state school of Ministry of Education in Giresun. Mehmet Demirezen is a professor of ELT at Ufuk University. Copyright by Inform scope. Material published and so copyrighted may not be published elsewhere without the written permission of IOJET International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2020, 7(2), 451-466 THE AUDITORY PERCEPTION OF NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH DIPHTHONGS IN VOCABULARY ITEMS BY ENGLISH TEACHERS IN TURKEY Neslihan Çorakçı [email protected] Mehmet&Demirezen [email protected] Abstract Diphthongs are double vowel sounds made by combining two vowels in the same syllable. During their articulation in the oral cavity, the first vowel sound glides onto the next vowel from one position of the mouth to another within the same syllable. That’s why they are heard as single-vowel phonemes by listeners. Because of a gliding movement in their articulation, most learners find them difficult to articulate and understand them at first. Hence, they can be tricky sounds to master for non-native speakers. The aim of this research is to explore the perceptibility of North American English diphthongs (NAE), which are /aʊ, oʊ, eɪ, ɔɪ, aɪ/ by Turkish English language teachers. A pre-test will be used to measure the perception of them in vocabulary items, which will be given to 30 Turkish English language teachers in a five scale multiple choice tests. The participants will be asked to choose the correct option. Then, a three- hour implicit and explicit teaching will be conducted by doing practices in a variety of exercises in the classroom. After the elapse of two weeks, the same pre-test will be administrated to the participants as a post-test. A comparison and contrast of the two tests results will be made to find out the existence and degrees of the perceptibility of the diphthongs in vocabulary items by Turkish English language teachers. Keywords: diphthong, monophthong, long vowel, vowel length, perception 1. Introduction The aim of this study is to make an inquiry about the perception of diphthongs by Turkish English teachers. The written and auditory perception of diphthongs is the primary concern of this study. American English diphthongs will be focused on thorough the study. They are /eɪ /, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /oʊ/, /aʊ/. In British English, there are three more diphthongs ending with (ə) schwa: They are /ɪə/, /eə/ and /ʊə/. These are not in the scope of this research. Pronunciation is the prerequisite of an intelligent communication. It is a significant item of language that makes our speech comprehensible and clear to native speakers (Varol, 2012, p.1). It has always been a crucial topic for non-native learners. Accent of a speaker gives clues about 451 Çorakçı & Demirezen his/ her communication abilities. If one likes to speak near native like, proficiency in pronunciation is crucial in addition to other disciplines like fluency, rhythm and intonation. One of the subtitles of pronunciation is diphthong. Diphthongs are very tricky long vowels for non-natives. There are lots of variables for the difficulty of them for learners. Since they are language specific and unique sounds, learners generally have difficulty in their perception and production. Similar to language learners, non-native English teachers in Turkey have difficulty in these sounds even if they have taken phonology classes in undergraduate. Pronunciation and speaking functions are underestimated. Instead; Grammar rules and formulas take the primary role in the education system. Language teaching is conducted disregarding the communication abilities just by taking into consideration language rules, structures and forms not the functions of language. It could be shown one of the reasons of misunderstanding of diphthongs. In addition to education policy, there are some other reasons why diphthongs are challenging for Turks: While Turkish words are written as they are pronounced and pronounced as they are written (Balpinar, 2006, p.7), the pronunciation of English words aren’t related to their orthography at times. This is another reason of difficulty. Turkish learners first perceive the written forms of language in their minds. Orthography has a significant effect on Turks since Turkish is an orthographic while English is not. Another cause is the diphthongs’ language specific features. In Turkish sound system there isn’t diphthong while they appear in English. They are language specific long vowels that don’t appear in Turkish. Turkish language learners aren’t acquainted with these sounds. They aren’t enough familiar with auditory and written inputs of diphthongs. The reasons above prevent Turks from becoming near native like speakers. 1.1. Literature Review Some other linguists conducted studies about diphthongs from different point of views in Turkey. Demirezen (2005, p.72) examined the /oʊ/ diphthong vowel and /ɔ:/ long vowel. He said that mispronunciation of these sounds gives harm to communicative competence of teacher trainees and their students but it is possible to remedy errors by means of exercise. He arranged different kinds of activities like corpus presentations, minimal pairs, tongue twisters, recognition exercises, reading aloud, dialogues, idioms, songs etc. to cure the fossilized diphthong /oʊ/. The activities provide learners with a native-like accent. Albağlar (2015) conducted a study with twenty all preparatory school students at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara/ Turkey to analyze Turkish university level EFL learners’ pronunciation of the diphthongs and tripthongs in English. He divided learners into two groups: First pre-intermediate and the second is advanced level of English learners. Target diphthong and tripthong sounds were selected as stimuli. Authentic sample sentences in which target sounds were embedded were given to the learners. They were asked to read these sentences. The utterances were recorded for 3 times one week apart from each other. In the stimuli different kinds of activities were used like ‘’read aloud, blank filling, word pronunciation’’. The collected data was scored by two native speakers according to a likert-scale prepared beforehand. At the end of the study it was seen that there was a strong relation between pre-intermediate group’s, advanced group’s proficiency level and pronunciation of diphthongs-tripthongs. There is a correlation between proficiency level and right articulation of target sounds. The orthographic feature was another variable in the study. It was clear that orthography doesn’t play a role in correct articulation of diphthongs and tripthongs. 452 International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2020, 7(2), 451-466 Demircioğlu (2013) studied on the pronunciation problems for Turkish learners in articulating of the diphthongs in English learning. It was a descriptive study that gives the reasons of inaccurate articulations. It was like a leading lesson for the learners who would like to improve their pronunciation skills of diphthongs. He developed a new technique. By putting your forefinger on your closed rounded lips, one can practice the diphthongs and see lip’s movements with the help of tongue. He explained it with an example: Try to make /aʊ/ sound your tongue, forefinger and lips on the mentioned position. You will see that on the gliding sound /ʊ/, your tongue will push your lips thorough your finger. It means that if it happens, you articulate the diphthong correctly. He said that thanks to pronunciation practices, it is possible to improve articulation skills. 2. The analysis of diphthongs 2.1. Views on diphthongs There are many descriptions of diphthongs made by different researchers. Diphthong is a combination of two vowels which is considered as the same syllable. (Dardjowidjojo, 2009, p. 33). To construct a diphthong, a vowel plus another vowel need to be in the same syllable at once. It is formed with two different vowels. Ogden made another definition: Diphthongs are monosyllabic vowels which have two obviously different points, one at the start and one at the end (2009, p. 64). It starts with a vowel giving the stress on the first sound and ends with another vowel that is less stressed when compared to the first part. Diphthongs are the sounds in which tongue glides from one position to another to form diphthongs (Fromkin, V., et al 2001, p. 693). Tongue and mouth aren’t stable in the oral cavity but they are dynamic. There are two types of diphthongs: The ones ending with /ɪ/ and the ones ending with /ʊ/. Turkish learners are more familiar with the eɪ /, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /aʊ/ diphthongs than /oʊ/ since they have auditory similarities. Demirezen (2019) made another definition. He said that a diphthong is made of two components. By definition and sound structure, diphthongs are a combination of two separate vowel sounds that, when uttered, the first vowel glide through the second vowel forming a single syllable. He placed emphasis on passing from one to another but in the same syllable. 2.2. The lengths of diphthongs Diphthongs are considered as long vowels because of their length similarities. When compared to long vowels they are longer and generally more stressed. In addition, they are more complex and harder to articulate than short vowels for learners. Figure 1 shows the lengths of diphthongs in oral cavity. Figure 1: NAE diphthong chart: Adapted from https://www.google.com.tr/search?q=The+chart+of+North+American+english+diphthongs& As seen in the figure, each diphthong has a starting and an ending point.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Using 'North Wind and the Sun' Texts to Sample Phoneme Inventories
    Blowing in the wind: Using ‘North Wind and the Sun’ texts to sample phoneme inventories Louise Baird ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University [email protected] Nicholas Evans ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University [email protected] Simon J. Greenhill ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University & Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History [email protected] Language documentation faces a persistent and pervasive problem: How much material is enough to represent a language fully? How much text would we need to sample the full phoneme inventory of a language? In the phonetic/phonemic domain, what proportion of the phoneme inventory can we expect to sample in a text of a given length? Answering these questions in a quantifiable way is tricky, but asking them is necessary. The cumulative col- lection of Illustrative Texts published in the Illustration series in this journal over more than four decades (mostly renditions of the ‘North Wind and the Sun’) gives us an ideal dataset for pursuing these questions. Here we investigate a tractable subset of the above questions, namely: What proportion of a language’s phoneme inventory do these texts enable us to recover, in the minimal sense of having at least one allophone of each phoneme? We find that, even with this low bar, only three languages (Modern Greek, Shipibo and the Treger dialect of Breton) attest all phonemes in these texts.
    [Show full text]
  • Gestural Phasing As an Explanation for Vowel Devoicing in Turkish* Stefanie Jannedy [email protected]
    OSU Working Papers in Linguistics 45 ($6-84) Gestural Phasing as an Explanation for Vowel Devoicing in Turkish* Stefanie Jannedy [email protected] ·· Abstract: Recent work in phonetics has suggested that. vowel devoicing or schwa deletion, observed in various languages, is a gradient process. This study provides evidence for the previously undocumented process of high vowel devoicing in Turkish. The prosodic and segmental factors rate, stress, preceding environment, following enviornment, vowel type, and syllable type were investigated. The factors are described, evaluated and ranked according to the results of a multiple regression (Variable Rule) analysis. Where applicable, results are contrasted with findings for i.e., Japanese and Korean. Furthermore, VOT (voice onset time) measurements of the three voiceless stops [p t k] were obtained, as well as duration measurements of vowels in open and closed syllables where vowels are significantly longer in Turkish. Generally, most devoicing occurred when the vowel was shorter (i.e., as a result of faster rates of speech, lack of stress, in closed syllables, ect.). These findings accord well with predictions made by a model assuming gradual gestural overlap of adjacent consonantal and vocalic gestures. It will be attempted to explain the findings with differences in phasing between articulatory gestures. I, Introduction In Turkish a syllable containing any of the four high vowels [i y i u] can be · realized without any audible traces of voicing. The phenomenon is demonstrated in Figure 1, which shows a contrasts between two words produced by the same speaker, one containing a fully realized vowel, the other containing a fully devoiced vowel.
    [Show full text]
  • The Application of English Theories to Sorani Phonology
    Durham E-Theses The Application of English Theories to Sorani Phonology AHMED, ZHWAN,OTHMAN How to cite: AHMED, ZHWAN,OTHMAN (2019) The Application of English Theories to Sorani Phonology, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13290/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk The Application of English Theories to Sorani Phonology Zhwan Othman Ahmed A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Modern Languages and Cultures Durham University 2019 Abstract This thesis investigates phonological processes in Sorani Kurdish within the framework of Element Theory. It studies two main varieties of Sorani spoken in Iraq which are Slemani and Hawler. Since the phonology of SK is one of the least studied areas in Kurdish linguistics and the available studies provide different accounts of its segments, I start by introducing the segmental system of the SK dialect group.
    [Show full text]
  • Phonetic Documentation in Three Collections: Topics and Evolution
    Phonetic documentation in three collections: Topics and evolution D. H. Whalen City University of New York (also Haskins Laboratories and Yale University) [email protected] Christian DiCanio University at Buffalo [email protected] Rikker Dockum Swarthmore College [email protected] Phonetic aspects of many languages have been documented, though the breadth and focus of such documentation varies substantially. In this survey, phonetic aspects (here called ‘categories’) that are typically reported were assessed in three English-language collections – the Illustrations of the IPA from the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, articles from the Journal of Phonetics, and papers from the Ladefoged/Maddieson Sounds of the World’s Languages (SOWL) documentation project. Categories were defined for consonants (e.g. Voice Onset Time (VOT) and frication spec- trum; 10 in total), vowels (e.g. formants and duration; 7 in total) and suprasegmentals (e.g. stress and distinctive vowel length, 6 in total). The Illustrations, due to their brevity, had, on average, limited coverage of the selected categories (12% of the 23 categories). Journal of Phonetics articles were typically theoretically motivated, but 64 had sufficient measurements to count as phonetic documentation; these also covered 12% of the cate- gories. The SOWL studies, designed to cover as much of the phonetic structure as feasible in an article-length treatment, achieved 41% coverage on average. Four book-length stud- ies were also examined, with an average of 49% coverage. Phonetic properties of many language families have been studied, though Indo-European is still disproportionately rep- resented. Physiological measures were excluded as being less common, and perceptual measures were excluded as being typically more theoretical.
    [Show full text]
  • Topics in Turkish Phonology.Pdf
    TOPICS IN TURKISH PHONOLOGY Harry van der Hulst and Jeroen van de Weijer 0. INTRODUCTION In this chapter we offer a discussion of some aspects of the phonology of Turkish. Turkish phonology has played a significant role in theoretical discussions on the nature of phonological representation and rule formalism. In particular, the formal description of vowel harmony has attracted a considerable amount of attention in the phonological literature since the 1940s, and we, too, will devote a separate section to this topic. In section 1 we provide a synopsis of the general facts of Turkish phonology. Besides giving an overview of the phonemes of Turkish, we illustrate its syllabic structure and stress pattern. We also present a number of the phonological rules of Turkish, all of which have received earlier treatment in the literature, in particular compensatory lengthening (section 1.4.3). A number of linguists have provided analyses of the process of vowel harmony which pervades the Turkish language. In section 2 we lay out the basic facts, discuss some of the earlier analyses, and then provide our own account, which departs from the earlier approaches mainly by availing itself of unary elements which may extend over suprasegmental domains like the word. We believe that significant generalizations can be captured under this approach. 1. ASPECTS OF TURKISH PHONOLOGY 1.1 THE PHONEMIC INVENTORY 1.1.1 Vowels Turkish has eight vowel phonemes which may be plotted on the familiar triangular vowel diagram as follows (cf. Lass 1984: 145; Maddieson 1984: 277): (1) high i,y u,uu mid o lower mid e,oe low a Following all earlier writers (e.g.
    [Show full text]
  • Vowel Harmony and Other Morphological Processes in Turkish Eyüp Bacanlı, Darin Flynn & Amanda Pounder*
    2020. Proceedings of the Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic 5. 26–40. https://doi.org/10.3765/ptu.v5i1.4782 Vowel Harmony and Other Morphological Processes in Turkish Eyüp Bacanlı, Darin Flynn & Amanda Pounder* Abstract. Vowel harmony appears to be a regular phonological process in Turkish, but nevertheless is not exceptionless. Due to these exceptions, it cannot be considered as part of the active phonology of Turkish. An analysis is proposed in which morphology and lexicon control vowel harmony and other processes similar in this regard. Morphology is unlike other modules of grammar in requiring access to all of syntactic, semantic, and phonological properties to function. One of the roles of morphology is to give commands to the phonology during formation of a complex word, such as “Carry out vowel harmony!” The phonology need not account for why such a command does not accompany certain suffixes, why it does not apply to all roots, nor why other commands only accompany a few suffixes. More generally, there is no need for phonology to access morphological information in a modular model of grammar. Keywords. Turkish; vowel harmony; morphologically-conditioned phonology; mor- phology; phonology; exceptionality 1. Introduction. Phonologists often distinguish bona fide phonology such as Turkish’s “very general rule of progressive vowel harmony” (Inkelas 2011:69) from morphologically-condi- tioned phonology (MCP) such as “the deletion of stem-final k” (ibid.; see also Inkelas 2014:22, 26). Morphologically conditioned phonology is the phenomenon in which a particular pho- nological pattern is imposed on a proper subset of morphological constructions (affixa- tion, reduplication, compounding) and thus is not fully general in the word internal pho- nological patterning of the language.” (Inkelas 2014:9; cf.
    [Show full text]
  • Vowel and Consonant Disharmony in Turkish George N
    Vowel and Consonant Disharmony in Turkish George N. Clements and Engin Sezer Cornell University 1. INTRODUCTION The present study examines a range of phenomena related to the topic of vowel and consonant harmony in Turkish. Its purpose is both descrip­ tive and theoretical. We aim first to bring new empirical data to bear upon the question of the formal treatment of vowel and consonant harmony, and second to show that autosegmental phonology provides an internal­ ly consistent account of not only the regularities but also the irregulari­ ties and apparent exceptions within the particular system of Turkish. Turkish is normally thought of as offering a paradigm case of vowel and consonant harmony at its simplest and most transparent. According to textbook descriptions, all vowels and consonants in Turkish words agree in their specification for backness, and all high vowels agree with preceding vowels in their specification for roundness. Moreover, the velar and lateral consonants are described as having back variants in back vowel words and front variants in front vowel words. Closer examination, however, re­ veals a host of exceptions to these statements. While these exceptions - or cases of disharmony - have not gone unnoticed in the literature, they have not received the attention that their interest for phonological theory merits. The existence of large numbers of exceptions to proposed rules or principles is often a sign that a system has not been well understood. We believe that this is the case with most recent studies of vowel and conso­ nant harmony, which have been carried out within phonological theories that postulate a principle of linearity in phonological representation.
    [Show full text]
  • Vowel Harmony in Turkish and Hungarian.Pdf
    Vowel harmony in Turkish and Hungarian∗ Harry van der Hulst University of Connecticut 1 INTRODUCTION In this paper I apply the approach to vowel harmony developed in van der Hulst (2011b, to appear, ms a.) to Turkish and Hungarian. In section 2 I briefly introduce the model, while sections 3 and 4 deal with Turkish and Hungarian, respectively. In section 5 I offer some conclusions. 2 THE RCVPMODEL 2.1 GESTURES,ELEMENTS AND HEADEDNESS In RcvP1 each vowel segment has a tripartite structure consisting of the Laryngeal, Manner and Place gesture, as in (1). Within each gesture, we find precisely two elements. ∗ This paper reflects the result of work in progress in which I explore the application of a model for vowel harmony that is in development to two languages, Turkish and Hungarian. I regard the analyses presented here as first explorations of some of the complexities that these languages offer. I gladly contribute this paper to this collection which honors my colleague and friend Glyne Piggott. I am very lucky for having had the opportunity to directly work with Glyne and profit from his sharp and encouraging style of thinking. I look forward to many more of his insightful contributions to the field of phonology and beyond. 1 RcvP stands for ‘Radical CV Phonology’, a dependency-based approach that is developed in van der Hulst (1995, 2005, 2011b; mss. a, b, c). This section presents a simplified version of the model and is almost identical to section 3 in van der Hulst (2011b), where the model is applied to vowel harmony in Yoruba.
    [Show full text]
  • A High Unrounded Vowel in Turkish
    Speech Communication 43 (2004) 143–154 www.elsevier.com/locate/specom A high unrounded vowel in Turkish: is it a central or back vowel? Mehmet Akif Kilicß a,*, Fatih O€ gut€ b a Department of Otolaryngology, Medical School, Kahramanmaraßs Su€tcßu€ Imam University, Yu€ru€kselim Mahallesi, 46050, Kahramanmaraßs TR, Turkey b Department of Otolaryngology, Medical School, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey Received 29 January 2004 Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate the phonetic properties of a Turkish vowel in which its backness is indefinite. The five members ([2],[],[i],[u] and the high unrounded Turkish vowel, in short HUTV) of the Turkish vowel system were investigated in five adult native Turkish speaker males. For the articulatory analysis, midsagittal magnetic reso- nance images were obtained during sustained phonation of the vowels, and the distances of the main constrictions from the glottis and the areas of the oral and pharyngeal cavities were calculated. For the acoustic analysis, both the Turkish vowels’ and HUTV-like IPA vowels’ fundamental frequencies (f0) and the first three formants (F1, F2 and F3), were calculated. The acoustic parameters of HUTV were compared both with other vowels’ and with those of the IPA vowels’. For the auditory analysis, 220 synthetic stimuli and 26 IPA vowels were used in an identification test. Articulatory analyses revealed that there were no statistically significant differences between HUTV and [u], and HUTV and []. Acoustic analyses revealed that there were no statistically significant differences between HUTV and [], and HUTV and phoneticians’ [v] and [ffl], and [q] vowels. Auditory investigation revealed that the [v] and [ffl], and [q] vowels perceived as HUTV.
    [Show full text]
  • Diagnosing Saudi Students' English Consonant Pronunciation Errors
    Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 10. Number 4 December 2019 Pp.180- 193 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol10no4.14 Diagnosing Saudi Students' English Consonant Pronunciation Errors Manahel Hamad Alzinaidi Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Muhammad M. M. Abdel Latif College of Languages & Translation, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University Riyadh, Saudi Arabia & Faculty of Graduate Studies of Education, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt Abstract Diagnosing the pronunciation difficulties second language (L2) learners encounter assists in identifying their training needs. Since a clearer profile of Arab students' English pronunciation difficulties is yet to be reached, this study tried to identify which English consonant sounds and clusters Saudi English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students have difficulty in pronouncing, and examine how students' language proficiency levels may influence their English consonant pronunciation performance. Forty Saudi female university students with two different English proficiency levels (lower-intermediate versus intermediate) took part in the study (20 students in each group). They completed a 4-section productive pronunciation test diagnosing their errors in pronouncing problematic consonant sounds and clusters in varied word positions. The data analysis showed that the participants' highest error percentages were in pronouncing: /ʒ/, /ŋ/, /p/, /ɹ/ and/ʧ/; /t/ and /d/ of the regular past morpheme -ed; and the 4- and 3-consonant clusters. It was also found that the lower-intermediate level students made more errors than the intermediate ones in pronouncing the majority of the consonant sounds and clusters, and that the variance between their errors is generally higher in the word-initial positions than the word-medial and -final ones.
    [Show full text]
  • Covariation of Phonological and Morphosyntactic Complexity
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report Title Correlating Complexity: A Typological Approach Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19n0c4m4 Journal UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report, 1(1) ISSN 2768-5047 Author Shosted, Ryan K Publication Date 2005 DOI 10.5070/P719n0c4m4 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2005) Correlating complexity: a typological approach Ryan K. Shosted University of California, Berkeley “In sum, linguists don’t even think of trying to rate languages as good or bad, simple or complex.” (O’Grady et al. 2005: 7) Abstract Proceeding from the assumption that all languages are equally complex, there exists a corollary, widely held but poorly documented, herein referred to as the negative correlation hypothesis. It states: if one component of language is simplified then another must be elaborated. Here, this assumption is reformulated in terms of a scientific hypothesis and subjected to statistical analysis. Thirty-two geographically diverse languages representing 30 language families and two isolates are tested for syllable count and inflectional synthesis on the verb as a means of rating their phonological and morphological complexity, respectively. The correlation between these measures is found to be slightly positive (r=0.0704), but statistically insignificant (p>0.05), indicating that the negative correlation hypothesis, if it is to be retained, still awaits scientific confirmation. 1.0. Introduction 1.1. The complexity problem and holistic typology Among some linguists, it seems there is a tacit assumption that the various components of human language (phonology, morphology, the lexicon, syntax and semantics) correlate negatively within a single language based on complexity.
    [Show full text]
  • Aspects of Vowel Harmony
    Aspects of Vowel Harmony Marc van Oostendorp University of the Aegean, Rhodes, April 22-23, 2004 1 Typology 1.1 Background ☞ Many of the changes in generative phonology after The Sound Pattern of English have been driven by considerations of languages different from English. In this class, we study one specific phenomenon, found in many languages but not in (any Standard variety of) English. ☞ Many developments can be seen as an interactions of considerations about representations and considerations about representations ☞ If a language L has vowel harmony, this means that the vowels in L can be subdivided into disjoint subsets S1...Sn (called harmonic sets), such that all the vowels within a certain domain (e.g. a word) belong to a harmonic set (quasi-formally :∀ word w ∈ LE ∀ vowel v ∈ w: ∃ Si ∈ LI , 1 ≤ i ≤ n: v ∈ Si). ☞ For instance: Tangale, a Chadic language spoken in Nigeria, has two subsets of vowels: /i, u, e, o/ and /I, U, E, O, a/, and words such as the following: (1) a. NUldEdE ‘dog’ b. seb-u ‘look (imp.)’ c. kEn-U ‘enter (imp.)’ d. tug-o ‘pounding’ e. wUd-O ‘farming’ Words like *NUldedE or *seb-U are typically absent from the language. The behaviour of the suffixes shows that harmony is an active process in the language. ☞ The existence of vowel harmony in natural language raises many ques- tions about the nature of the computational process involved, such as: 1 2 1.2. Rules and Exceptions ❀ why does harmony often run from stems to affixes but never the other way around? ❀ why is there no pervasive process of consonantal harmony along- side vowel harmony? ❀ how should we understand opaque and transparent vowels? We will divide the history of generative grammar in three periods in which the emphasis was on (i) rules, (ii) representations and (iii) con- straints, and see that each of these concentrated on certain questions, leaving aside others.
    [Show full text]